Rick Perry Covered Up Climate Change in Reports

Rick Perry is one the leading conservative figures in America, a man running for the nomination for the Republican Party candidate for President of the United States. His reactionary and even socially backward statements are almost legendary. So it is not surprising that while being a conservative he is also a Global Warming denier. However this denial has been taken to a new level even for him. He has been exposed for removing mentions of Global Warming from scientific reports, him and environmental officials under him.

The Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) was contacted by Perry political appointees to produce regular reports on the current state of Galveston Bay. The reports were made on the rising sea-levels in the Bay and what was causing them. Every single one of the scientists behind this work have come forward and blasted Gov. Perry for his deliberate removal of all mentions Climate Change from the reports. The reports had been altered so much that the scientists behind it have asked to have their names removed from the studies.

This is their statement released in The Guardian:

“None of us can be party to scientific censorship so we would all have our names removed,” said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice-president of the Houston Advanced Research Centre.

“To me it is simply a question of maintaining scientific credibility. This is simply antithetical to what a scientist does,” Lester said. “We can’t be censored.” Scientists see Texas as at high risk because of climate change, from the increased exposure to hurricanes and extreme weather on its long coastline to this summer’s season of wildfires and drought.

-The Guardian

John Anderson is an oceanographer at Rice University and wrote the section of the report on rising sea levels at Galveston Bay. In retaliation for the conservative anti-science censorship, Anderson has given Mother Jones with a copy of the document showing all the cuts the Perry Government made to cover up Global Warming.

This is the statement made by Anderson from Mother Jones:

Anderson says that the cuts to his paper were political and had nothing to do with science. The research underlying the study was peer-reviewed and is part of a decade long study Anderson has conducted in partnership with other scientists.

The Geological Society of America published the scientists’ results in 2008. “I was a bit astonished,” Anderson tells Mother Jones. “Really this paper is just a review of papers we published previously. There’s no denying the fact that sea level rise has significantly accelerated. The scientific community is not at all divided on that issue.”

– Mother Jones

The true irony here is that Rick Perry has a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M University. Not ironic however is the fact that his transcript has been released and shows the he mostly got mostly C’s and D’s. What is not surprising is that he opposes all regulation of industry and denied reports and denied the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency. As Governor of Texas, the state has refused to sign on to the federal government’s new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

All of this is in the pocket of big oil companies and corporations that poison the earth for profits. The time has to come when America, the last place in the world still denying Global Warming has to wake up to the fact that the battle against it is losing due to capitalism. It is the profit motive alone that makes the transition to alternative energy impossible. Wind, solar, tidal, wave and even geothermal will never make the profits that oil will. It is capitalism that is destroying the planet, the last bastion of denial is coming out of the US business class and its whores in the government and media.